The Best Talent Acquisition Tools 2023 [Complete Guide]

So many candidates, so little time— and sometimes all of them look like a perfect fit for the position!

Manual labor is out; with the right tools, you’ll be able to speed up, automate, and elevate the talent acquisition process and eliminate chances for human mistakes and oversights.

In this article, we’ll recommend you just that: a selection of excellent talent acquisition tools, divided into the following sections according to the hiring stage:

Candidate Sourcing Tools;
Applicant Tracking Systems;
Candidate Relationship Management Systems;
Candidate Assesment Tools.

Here we’ll describe how these tools work, their strongest features, and assess the value for money.

Try them out, mix and match — and let us know if some of these made your life easier. 🪶

What are talent acquisition tools?

Talent acquisition tools are technologies, platforms, or software solutions that assist human resources professionals, recruiters, or hiring managers in finding, attracting, and acquiring skilled individuals for open job positions.

These tools aim to streamline and automate parts of the recruitment process to make it more efficient, effective, and bias-free.

Talent acquisition tools are usually grouped into the following categories:

Candidate Sourcing Tools: These tools help recruiters find potential candidates on various platforms, including professional networks like LinkedIn or other social media platforms.
Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS): These tools allow businesses to collect, sort, and track applicants for job openings. They can help manage job postings, store applicant information, and automate communication with candidates.
Candidate Relationship Management (CRM) Systems: These tools help recruiters build and maintain relationships with potential candidates, even before a suitable role opens up. They can be used for talent pooling and nurturing passive candidates.
Recruitment Marketing Platforms: These tools help to promote the company’s brand and job vacancies. They often include features for building career websites, social recruiting, and analytics.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) Tools: AI can be used in various ways in the recruitment process, such as screening resumes, scheduling interviews, and even conducting initial assessments of candidates.
Video Interviewing Platforms: These tools facilitate remote interviews, allowing recruiters and hiring managers to conduct interviews with candidates regardless of geographical location.
Assessment Tools: These include personality tests, skills tests, and cognitive ability tests to help assess a candidate’s suitability for a role.
Onboarding Tools: Once a candidate is hired, these tools facilitate the onboarding process to ensure a smooth transition for the new employee.
Job Boards and Aggregators: These platforms allow employers to post job openings and reach a large number of potential candidates.

Each of these tools serves a unique purpose in the talent acquisition process and can be valuable depending on the specific needs and goals of an organization.

Find them: Candidate Sourcing Tools

Candidate sourcing tools are used by recruiters and hiring professionals to proactively identify, find, and engage potential candidates for job vacancies.

These tools help to find both active job seekers and passive candidates who may not be actively looking for a job but could be open to new opportunities.

With these, you can target unemployed candidates, freelancers, independent contractors, or headhunt prospects that are currently not looking for new job opportunities.

They might change their minds once they hear your offer!

Here are some examples:

1.LinkedIn + Social Media

Best for: Long-term talent acquisition strategy, employer branding, and authentic connection.

Granted, using LinkedIn to hunt for potential employees still demands some manual labor — but hear us out. LinkedIn has tons of benefits as a talent acquisition tool.

Using automated, tech-powered talent acquisition software shortens the process and makes it easier, but it can’t replicate the authentic communication you get with LinkedIn. People say social media isn’t exactly famous for authenticity, but you’re free to make things different and own the game.

Actually, LinkedIn can do the work for you if you follow these simple steps:

Join professional groups, follow notable industry figures and your company’s competitors;
Browse through their posts and comments to discover people looking for the job: you’ll notice the green “Open to Work” rings on their PFPs;
Go a step further and contact even those who aren’t looking for new opportunities;
Don’t be afraid to join, or start the conversation! There’s a lot of solidarity among the LinkedIn folks, and your job posting will likely be shared far and wide.

Simple as that.

What’s even better: not even the “hard mode” is difficult: it includes all of the above, with some consistency. Also, when you’re posting on behalf of your company, frame it as a great place to work, highlight the benefits, and candidates will swarm — so you won’t have to chase them as hard, just cherry-pick the best candidates.

2.HireEZ (ex Hiretual)

Best for: Outbound recruiting from all over the web, with solid candidate engagement features.

HireEZ is a rich outbound recruiting platform. It has access to more than 45+ websites where candidates gather (LinkedIn, GitHub, Twitter, AngelList, Meta (Facebook), etc), and uses AI to analyze their data and provide you with potential employees who fit the criteria.

It puts additional focus on minority categories for diverse hiring. HireEZ complies with several acts/standards to protect the candidate data (CCPA, GDPR, SOC 2, SOC 3 + SSO, and MFA, to name a few).

Other notable features include:

Centralized HR platform with a Chrome Extension — A flexible portal making teamwork and administrative tasks easier.
Boolean Builder — Boolean Strings enriched with AI precisely define the candidate profile;
Candidate Engagement — Although the main purpose of HireEZ is candidate sourcing, it also has candidate engagement and scheduling options (email/phone collection, engagement notifications, email tracking and analytics, automated meeting scheduling).

This tool puts special focus on these industries:

IT/Tech;
Staffing;
Healthcare/Non-profit;
Security and Defense.

Considering all these possibilities and pricing ($149/month for Professional (individual) and Custom for recruiting teams), HireEZ looks like a scalable solution, which individuals, SMBs, and enterprises may find attractive.

3. Hiretual

Hiruetal is an AI-powered search engine that allows recruiters to source candidates using natural language processing and contextual search, making it easier to find the right fit. It also provides market insights and competitor analysis. Moreover, it has features for candidate engagement and relationship management, like personalized email campaigns and follow-ups.

It scans across 45+ platforms and 700M+ professional profiles to provide comprehensive candidate profiles.

4. SeekOut

SeekOut is an AI-powered talent 360 platform that gives recruiters a competitive edge when sourcing for hard-to-find and diverse talent.

It searches not only public web data and social media profiles but also indexes and makes searchable hundreds of millions of profiles from patent databases and research papers.

SeekOut also provides features like an automated Boolean builder, a team collaboration feature for sharing candidate lists, notes, and projects, and diversity hiring filters to improve inclusion in the hiring process.

5. AmazingHiring

This tool is greait if you are looking to hire tech talent. AmazingHiring aggregates profiles of tech professionals from multiple sources and provides a unified candidate profile with their professional background, social footprint, and professional contributions.

It sources candidate profiles from over 50+ networks and communities, including GitHub, Stack Overflow, Kaggle, and more, making it a powerful tool for sourcing tech professionals.

Amazing Hiring offers features like advanced Boolean queries, technology stack search, and a candidate engagement module.

6. Job Boards and Aggregators:

Tools like Glassdoor, Monster, CareerBuilder, and Indeed allow employers to post job openings and reach a large number of potential candidates.

Each of these platforms has a large database of active job seekers and hosts jobs across various industries and roles. In addition to posting jobs, recruiters can also search for resumes or profiles of job seekers.

Track them: Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS)

ATS is the “brains” of the hiring process; it is in charge of:

Collecting and storing candidate information;
Filtering and organizing the candidates according to multiple keywords and criteria;
Selecting the best applicants with the help of AI;
Managing the job postings and applications (interview scheduling, automated emails, and notifications).

Not all of them work the same. When picking an ATS, be sure to pick a tool with a plan that matches your needs exactly. Additionally, look for the ones that can scale and grow with you. An ATS that’s too robust is a waste of money, and the one too weak will make the hiring process unnecessarily hard.

Recruiteze

Best for: A complete ATS with dozens of features, focused on resume formatting, data sorting, and job broadcasting.

Recruiteze is an all-in-one ATS we built to streamline the recruiting — and help HRs fall back in love with their calling.

Every team has its own tempo, so our system enables you to create a custom workflow.

The software keeps track of all candidate-related metrics, such as jobs published, received applications, interviews scheduled, and how many candidates have accepted or declined jobs. Email integration (Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, Exchange email) lets you automate the response to the best candidates.

These are the strong sides of our applicant tracking system:

Powerful Job Broadcasting — Recruiteze users can publish jobs on Indeed, ZipRecruiter, Google Jobs, and a lot more online job boards, all with a single click;
Cloud-based Software — HRs can access the tool wherever there’s an internet connection. Cloud technology makes it accessible and flexible since the backend is handled on our part;
Unlimited Tagging & Filtering — Get as precise as you want with filters, and you’ll receive pinpoint accurate results;
Comprehensive CRM platform — Everything is conveniently organized and lets the HR teams review relationship history with each candidate.

Recruiteze covers tons of additional features with one powerful, cloud-based solution. Apart from typical ATS tools, you also get:

Customer Support for Everyone — We don’t value Enterprise users over lower-tiered users: you all matter to us equally! That’s why every Recruiteze user gets full customer support at short notice.
Widget for Careers Page — Embed the widget into the “Careers” page, and visitors will be able to scroll through it to see all your openings. Once they click on a job that interests them, they’ll be directed to your customized online application.

Recruiteze is iz completely flexible, covering anything from small businesses and solo HR pros, to larger companies — but we think SMBs will be especially thrilled with it.

Greenhouse

Best for: An easy-to-use ATS with 300+ pre-built integrations.

Find, track, vet, and hire — Greenhouse is a complete ATS that checks all the boxes.

Users describe it as easy to navigate, adaptable, and reliable, although a couple of reviews mention that reporting is too complex (according to g2.com).

The whole platform truly is beautiful and easy to use, just like the reviews say. The simplicity spreads across all features, creating a pleasant experience for recruiters and candidates. Candidate self-scheduling is tidy on all devices, and bias-removing nudges ensure recruiters stay objective while vetting the candidates. However, they present as pop-up reminders, which can get annoying after a while.

Greenhouse boasts data-driven recruiting. LinkedIn capturing feature is especially convenient: in a couple of links, Greenhouse users can pull the info from the candidate’s account and add the prospect into the system.

Other great features we’ve noticed are:

Pre-built integrations — Greenhouse can be integrated with almost any other tool in HR’s tech stack, powered by excellent APIs;
Teamwork-friendly interface — The hiring process is optimized to perfection and it’s easy to get all hiring managers involved.

Pricing is completely customizable, but there’s no way to get the ballpark estimate without contacting Greenhouse for a quote.

According to its capabilities, ambitious growth, and custom pricing, Greenhouse seems like a good match for enterprises, although there are plans that include companies with 1-50 and 20.000+ employees.

Assess them: Candidate Assessment Tools

Candidate Assessment Tools help HR specialists evaluate the applicants’ knowledge, skills, and personality, to see who’s the best fit for the collective.

Certain positions demand specific, complex skillsets and technical knowledge — think developers and data experts. HRs not being knowledgeable enough in those fields is not an issue anymore. Modern tools create perfect tests to examine candidates’ skills, so recruiters don’t need to intervene as much.

DevSkiller

Best for: Evaluating software developers and conducting live coding interviews.

DevSkiller is an assessment platform dedicated to tech pros:

Engineers (Software, DevOps, QA, Security);
Developers (Mobile, Frontend, Backend, Full Stack);
Data Scientists;
Low/no-code technologies and software.

HRs use it to screen the applicants with online coding tests that cover more than 220 programming languages, frameworks, and libraries. Additionally, DevSkiller provides Recruitment Certification Course for tech recruiters.

DevSkiller has candidate data anonymization features and a fully remote-friendly process, removing hiring bias completely.

This talent acquisition tool for developers consists of two products:

1. TalentScore ($499/month): select the skills to be tested, send the test invite, and receive automated and objective scores.

2. TalentBoost ($999/month): a data-backed employee growth platform that helps recruiters assign projects based on employees’ talents, fill the employees’ knowledge gaps, and track their progress.

Pricing is custom, but the prices of TalentScore and TalentBoost are quite hefty, signaling this tool is best used by large companies and enterprises. It’s difficult to estimate the exact pricing and scope of features you need without a personal consultation.

This makes DevSkiller slow and complex to deploy, but they promise a highly-customized, cost-effective solution.

HireArt

Best for: Diverse candidate evaluation platform with EoR, and contractor management features.

HireArt is a candidate-vetting platform that uses predictive analysis to pick employees with specific skill sets. It pulls talent from Facebook, LinkedIn, Glassdoor, Indeed, and other talent sources, and then creates shortlists of best applicants.

This platform has everything you might expect from Candidate Assessment Tools. Use it to create jobs, fill the hiring pipeline as needed, keep in touch with candidates. HireArt promises to provide guidance and benefits along the way:

Talk on Slack, or via mobile, email, text, or phone;
Sponsored health, dental, and vision insurance;
Transparent payroll with time tracking.

Onboarding possibilities are excellent. HireArt eliminates paperwork and enables digital signatures, direct deposits, and compliance documents for new employees.

These possibilities make HireArt especially interesting:

Growing contractor workforce — Staffing partners will track and hire contractors to take the hard-to-fill roles; automated sourcing takes care of simple roles;
Employer of Record (EOR) Service — A much-needed addition if you hire independent contractors and freelancers from other countries.

Pricing can’t be found anywhere on their website, so you need to contact them personally for a quote.

HireArt is a feature-rich and diverse platform with some big-shot clients (Facebook, Dropbox, Lyft), so it’s safe to assume large companies will like what it has to offer.

Engage them: Candidate relationship management tools

Candidate Relationship Management (CRM) systems are tools that help recruiters and hiring managers build and maintain relationships with potential candidates, particularly those who might not be looking for new opportunities at the moment.

These systems allow you to create a talent pool of potential candidates to reach out to when the right role comes up.

Avature CRM

Avature is a cloud-based software designed for sourcing and recruitment. It allows recruiters to develop sophisticated workflows to manage candidate engagement and enhance the overall candidate experience.

Avature’s CRM solution is highly configurable, allowing for a high degree of personalization. It’s also known for its strong data reporting and analytics capabilities, which can provide valuable insights into your hiring process and help improve your sourcing strategies.